In recent technologies of blood transfusion, blood component transfusion is employed, in which components of blood (whole blood) obtained from blood donation and the like are separated, and only a component necessary for a patient is supplied. The blood component transfusion enables reduction of burdens or side effects on a patient's circulatory system and efficient use of the donated blood.
In the separation of the blood components, a centrifuge machine disclosed in the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 6,910,998 centrifugally separates blood into a light supernatant (platelet poor plasma) fraction, a heavy precipitation (concentrated red blood cell) fraction, and buffy coat formed therebetween. These centrifugally separated components are transferred to and preserved in predetermined medical bags, using a blood bag system configured from a plurality of preservation bag (medical bags) and a plurality of tubes.
Incidentally, when the blood bag system is directly attached to the centrifuge machine, a plurality of medical bags and tubes may be entangled in a complicated manner, and attachment may become difficult and workability may be decreased. Therefore, the present applicant has proposed, as disclosed in JP 2012-510299 W, the medical bag in which the whole blood is stored and a part of the tubes connected to the medical bag are handled by being fixed and held to a cassette. The blood bag system is attached to the centrifuge machine through the cassette. Therefore, labor of arrangement of the bags and tubes can be substantially saved, and the blood bag system can be easily set to the centrifuge machine. Further, after centrifugal separation, the medical bags can be hung from a hanging tool or the like and caused to stand by while the medical bags and the cassette are integrated.
As described above, a handling property of the blood bag system is improved by use of the cassette. However, there are still inconvenient points for users. Specifically, when a plurality of cassettes (that is, a plurality of medical bags) is individually hung from the hanging tool, work (for example, buffy coat pooling work) in a state of hanging the cassettes (medical bags) becomes complicated, and an inconvenience of a decrease in workability is caused. Further, a larger space (work place) is required by a space of randomly arranged cassettes.